Increasing Functional Avidity of T Cell Receptor (TCR)-Redirected T Cells by Removing Defined N-Glycoslyation Sites in the Constant Domain of Introduced TCR Chains.

Abstract Adoptive transfer of T lymphocytes transduced with a TCR to impart tumor reactivity has been reported as potential strategy to redirect immune responses to target cancer cells. However, the affinities of most TCRs specific for shared tumor antigens that can be isolated are usually low, in part reflecting the nature of the targeted tumor antigens which are self-proteins. Thus strategies that can increase the affinity or functional avidity of TCRs to be used in therapy to transduce T cells might be therapeutically beneficial. However, current strategies for increasing TCR affinity require extensive and usually random mutagenesis followed by screening the many derived mutations, and m…